


North North West

by th_esaurus



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Clones, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You tried to kill me this one time," Tony tells him nonchalantly, like it's an old in-joke.</p><p>"Why would I do that?"</p><p>"Because you were a megalomaniac." Tony shrugs. "We're over that phase now."</p>
            </blockquote>





	North North West

Tony doesn't try to deceive himself about the state of his world. He knows he does his part, and he knows the reality of his actions now, so forgive him, please, if he partakes in a little emotional self-deception now and then.  
  


*

  
  
He never quite justifies to himself why he believes Obadiah wasn't purposefully trying to kill him. The man practically raised him – his father, who loved Tony dearly, probably, was absent as soon as he'd checked Tony for fingers and toes. Even as he walks across the wreckage of his arc reactor, his lab, his colleague and friend, with the evidence staring him down through ash-stained eyelids, Tony believes Obadiah did not want to kill him.   
  
He picks up a scrap of metal, a shard of the suit that seemed a very expensive cheap copy of his own. There is cloth burnt into it like a fossil; skin too, perhaps. It's not a pleasant thought, and Tony makes a face. He deals with slaughter distantly, from an office or workshop, and has never had cause to revisit the scene of his crimes. He isn't used to the smell of charred metal, the scattered smell of flesh that he won’t scrub out of this suit.   
  
"I'm sorry, Tony," Pepper tells him. She had waited in the car, as moral support and with a catalogue of Obadiah's past transgressions, if Tony needed it.   
  
"I bet he is too," Tony replies. It's not spiteful. He runs his thumb over the metal in his pocket, too blunt to cut.  
  


*

  
  
With his usual drinking partner dead, Tony spends a few nights with Jim, a bottle of scotch and some gentle persuasion. He talks about the Obadiah he remembers. "He was always such a presence, you know? I always remember him being taller. This big, gentle Santa Claus of a man. He taught me to ride a bike, did you know that? Fucked if I can remember how now, but it's the—the principle of the thing."  
  
"He wasn't your Dad, Tony. Maybe your Dad wasn't your Dad either, but—"  
  
"Don't get drunk and insult my father."  
  
"I'm not drunk and I'm not insulting your father. I'm just trying to inject a little  _perspective_  into this situation."   
  
Tony downs his glass and slumps back on the sofa. He hated Jim's voice of reason shtick in college, and he hates it now, if with grudging respect. But Jim never knew Obadiah much, only peripherally from the stories Tony told, or as the face in the crowd that was not Howard Stark, nodding at Tony lightly at his graduation. Tony always seemed to be looking for a family that deserved him, in those early years, but his gaze rested on Obadiah and went no further. Blocked by Obadiah's wide shoulders and open arms, there might have been a healthier father figure waiting for Tony in the wings. He never found it. Instead, he had Obadiah to clap him on the back and talk over missile specs and teach him to smoke a cigar at fourteen.   
  
"I'm thinking about replacing him," Tony says, somewhat coldly for all the warm insobriety in his veins.   
  
"Well, good for you. You just give it some time."  
  
"Yeah," Tony agrees lightly. "It'll probably take a while."  
  


*

  
  
The board picks up Obadiah's redundant injunction against Tony, claiming a series of traumatising events has rendered him unable to perform to task. Half of them want to press charges against him for destroying company property. In any case, Tony has a month or two free from Stark Industries, to clear his mind.  
  
It takes a long time to fly to Afghanistan. There's plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to work out stray equations and reason away slight ethical dilemmas. Tony's used to justifying those.   
  
He keeps that remain of Obadiah's armour in an airtight glass case, in a locked drawer of his desk. Somewhere around the lab, Tony knows he's got plenty of science equipment. It just got shoved aside a long time ago for the engineering junk and a couple of cars. He spends almost an entire day clearing space, dusting slides, cleaning microscopes. "Having a yard sale, sir?" Jarvis asks.  
  
"You're prying. We've talked about that."  
  
"Apologies, sir. I'll remember to keep my big, digital nose out of it next time. Those were your exact words, I believe."  
  
Jarvis reserves comment when Tony begins storing gigabytes of research on grafting, Prometea, the Roslin Institute, ACT, and a hefty chunk of legal jargon on what exactly the Constitution allows in regards to human cloning. Pepper comments neither, because Pepper doesn't know about this particular project. Tony's keeping it on the down low, and besides, Pepper has recently come to realise she has a life outside Tony Stark – though only just outside. She tells Tony, her chin held high as though expecting to be shot down, that Hogan has invited her out for dinner and she has accepted and yes, it's going to be in a romantic context and no, Tony has no say in the matter.  
  
Tony later adds loneliness to his list of justification.   
  
With no one to chastise him, a wealth of genius and money at his disposal, and a crack in his universe the exact size and shape of one man, Tony clones Obadiah Stane. He doesn't really see why he shouldn't. It's another year – well beyond the natural grieving process - before this shape resembles the Obadiah Tony knew.  
  
There is a long and bizarre period where Tony is forced to look after him. Like a child, he cannot fend for himself and needs to be fed, clothed, bathed, taught. Obadiah never did these things for Tony in his own childhood, but he was there to toss a pigskin around the back garden, to take Tony to the pictures, to cook him a roast on the occasional Sunday. He looked out for Tony and, Tony would say, moulded him from the boy who ran away to the man who came back. Now it's him, holding Obadiah's soft and unmarked hand, teaching him how to walk. He hires a glorified babysitter, strictly off the books, and bullshits about his poor cousin, the doctors said, brain damage that isn't entirely irreparable. Tony buys back the mansion that went to Obadiah's distant and many-times-removed relatives after his death, installs him there, and pays the girl in a year what she might otherwise have earned in a lifetime. There are days when he sends her away, and spends an afternoon telling Obadiah stories, showing him photographs and reels his father shot, building back a memory piece-by-piece that doesn't exist anymore.   
  
He picks the lock on the drinks cabinet, untouched by the dust that settled around the house, and tells Obadiah what he likes to drink.   
  
"You tried to kill me this one time," Tony tells him nonchalantly, like it's an old in-joke.  
  
"Why would I do that?"  
  
"Because you were a megalomaniac." Tony shrugs. "We're over that phase now."  
  
He sets up a computer and shows Obadiah how to use it, so he can do as much research on his previous life as he wants. Tony never keeps tabs on that.  
  
He pitches up one night and finds Obadiah with his head shaved and his beard trim, his hands ring-adorned and smoothing down his suit. Tony goes to pour him a drink, but Obadiah bats his hands away lightly and does it himself. "That's the way," Tony says, grinning, and feels, for the first and only time, like a father.   
  


*

  
  
Tony misses Pepper's birthday dinner because he's spending the evening with Obadiah. He tells her he'll make it up to her in diamonds and pearls, and then starts humming Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend to her answering machine. Hogan proposes to her that night, and Pepper comes to work the next day with a gold band on her wedding finger.  
  
"Is that my present?" Tony asks, noticing it an hour before she leaves.  
  
"No. It's my fiancé's."  
  
"You're kidding me, right. When did that happen?"  
  
"Last night. You're not  _that_  out of the loop."  
  
Tony sends her off with three bottles of champagne, then drives over to Obadiah's and sits on his couch and moans about it. "Pepper always was your bit on the side," Obadiah says, putting his hand on Tony's shoulder. He talks like he's known Pepper for years. "Not in the crude sense, of course. Am I right?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess."  
  
And then Tony whiles the evening away telling Obadiah how he and Pepper always had a healthy animosity, both acting the parent to Tony. "You just wanted me all to yourself," Tony mocked, half draped over Obadiah's shoulder, a bottle of wine in his hand.  
  
"I can see why," Obadiah says simply, just smiling.  
  
It's like the old days, or perhaps the older days, when Obadiah was a sounding board and a crutch. There's no point in purposeful imperfection, and Tony created a worthy mentor, someone with limitless capacity for knowledge and business know-how. Obadiah has the equivalent of a management degree in his mind, and picks up the workings of Stark Industries fast enough that Tony feels confident bringing him back on the business side of things – under the table, of course. For a brief and dizzying moment, he decides it's totally possible to bring Obadiah back out into the open. He's got a tongue that can charm away any anomalies, and could make up something feasible about finding him half alive after the accident – that poor SHIELD cover story – and oh my, isn't S.I.'s medical branch wonderful, keeping him alive for all this time and sending him back into the world, spick-span and recuperated?   
  
"What are you thinking?" Obadiah asks him wryly. "You know better than to keep secrets from me. That worked so well last time."  
  
Obadiah doesn't think it's a good time. Tony pontificates and, eventually, agrees. Obadiah was always better at bookkeeping the public image side of things.  
  
There's never a time when Tony doesn't feel comfortable in Obadiah's company, but Obadiah likes to reassure him of his reality anyway. He starts telling Tony stories about before he was born, when he and Howard were young up-and-comers, flying through the sixties on the wind of their own heady success. He tells Tony about the time a rival company broke into their basement and stole blueprints for the fledgling Saturn missile, and how within a year he and Howard had put them out of business. "Howard went up to their old C.E.O. and toasted him," Obadiah says, chuckling at the memory. "And he said to the guy, he said, 'Should've waited until we perfected that junkyard missile before you tried to copy it, hmm?'" Tony laughs too. He doesn't have a perfect mental picture of his father, so the stories never jar with him. It never occurs to him that Obadiah, this Obadiah, whose hand rests warmly on his shoulder and whose eyes sparkle darkly, didn't know Howard Stark.  
  


*

  
  
The board of directors tell Tony they're so pleased with the work he's contributing of late. That they sincerely hope his little mental breakdown stage is behind him.   
  


*

  
  
Obadiah seems to bore of tales of Howard's apparent humanity, and starts to talk of Maria with a fondness Tony didn't notice before. He smiles tenderly as he talks about Maria's kindness, her affection for her child, her support for her husband. Tony's lasting memories of his mother are from a distance, but he figures he was too young to realise how much she loved him; that Obadiah had a better perspective on things.   
  
Tony's side of their conversations lingers on Pepper these days; her approaching wedding, how happy she seems. "I feel kind of vulgar saying it now, but I did want to sleep with her just once."  
  
"Only once?"  
  
"Sure. You try something more than that, and all the spontaneity's gone."  
  
Obadiah taps his cigar on the side of his ashtray and returns it to his mouth. It makes him sound a little slow, a little deliberate, talking round the butt like that. He's running out; Tony needs to find out where he used to get the damn things from and stock up. "I can't disagree with that. I never tried it again."  
  
"What, sex? I knew you were frigid, Obie, but honestly." Tony grins, mocking.  
  
"We can't all be as prolific as you, Tony." Obadiah stares at him. The wrinkles around his eyes are not so deep set as they used to be – this body is less stressed, less worn. Tony hardly notices. "I was talking specifics."  
  
"Come on, riddles aren't your style."  
  
Obadiah just shrugs, his smoking gown shifting silkily on his shoulders. "Well I knew you weren't going to ask Pepper. So I stepped in. Did my duty."  
  
It takes Tony a minute. A minute long enough for denial and disbelief and unusual hurt. "You never slept with Pepper."  
  
Obadiah doesn't stop staring. "You were in Afghanistan, Tony. Nobody knew if you were even alive. Pepper has needs too."  
  
Tony puts down his glass and doesn't bother to excuse himself, and flat-lines it home. He picks up the phone to call Pepper and then puts it down again. He drinks a beer. He flicks on the news and flicks it straight off again, and drinks another beer. Then he puts on the suit and flies for an hour around the house, over the moonlit water and back again. When he touches down, Tony realises what an idiot he's been. He remembers, for the first time in months, that his Obadiah is not Obadiah Stane.   
  
His mind doesn't really offer up a reason why Obadiah would lie to him.  
  


*

  
  
When Obadiah pulls the gun on him, Tony's surprised. Genuinely shocked.   
  
"You're smart, Tony, but you're not very intelligent," Obadiah tells him, smiling, cocking the pistol and holding it level with Tony's chest, just below the arc reactor. "Didn't your shiny new moral compass tell you this was going to backfire?"  
  
"I gave you a second chance," Tony hissed.  
  
"And I applaud your attention to detail. I think I had it right about you the first time. You were never meant to overtake me. Howard knew he couldn't do a thing without me, but you – you always insisted on that tired old lone wolf approach. I didn't raise you to become a spoilt little prick."  
  
"You didn't raise me at all."  
  
"Perhaps not," Obadiah murmured. "But that hardly matters now, does it?"  
  
"You're dead anyway. If you kill me, you still won't take the company back."  
  
"Oh, but Tony, Stark Industries' medical branch is just so wonderful, keeping me alive for all this time. It's just a shame you couldn't take the emotional weight of my coma. You never seemed the suicidal type, but the media's so easily persuaded these days."  
  
He smiles, and it is every inch Obadiah's smile.  
  
Tony doesn't mean to kill him. He hears the gunshot and feels blood instantly. But as he staggers back and touches his chest, there is only dented metal.   
  
It takes him a minute to find the bullet, ricocheted and embedded in Obadiah's neck. His hands fly to it, already red and slippery, and he chokes, not yet dead but barely alive. Tony watches him bleed to death, slowly this time. It had been quick before, Tony too exhausted to feel any real emotion. "It's okay," he says, more to himself. "You're not even a real person. It's okay." He goes to put his hand on Obadiah's forehead, but pulls it back at the last minute.  
  
The blood pooling on the carpet creeps towards his feet. So Tony steps back.  
  


*

  
  
"Pepper, you'd tell me if I was going to do something really stupid, wouldn't you?"  
  
"I always try, Mr Stark."


End file.
